


Precessing in Circles

by handschuhmaus



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Darth Plagueis - James Luceno
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Dark, Gen, Palpatine betrays Plagueis to the Jedi AU, Self-Destruction, suicidality and adjacent ideas, the Jedi are terrible at mental healthcare
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-07 09:04:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19081873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handschuhmaus/pseuds/handschuhmaus
Summary: precession(n):"The slow movement of the axis of a spinning body around another axis due to a torque (such as gravitational influence) acting to change the direction of the first axis. It is seen in the circle slowly traced out by the pole of a spinning gyroscope"(OED)Darth Plagueis plays his hand ...ineptly.Among other things, overtures in the aftermath of a fight are messier.And the Jedi still have little use for young Palpatine. At least, if you ask the council...





	Precessing in Circles

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Often Grows The Wolf](https://archiveofourown.org/works/286287) by [sabarte](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabarte/pseuds/sabarte). 
  * Inspired by [Dooku Captured, Pt 2](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3785653) by [DarthNickels](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarthNickels/pseuds/DarthNickels). 
  * Inspired by [Taking the Long View](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/92855) by Lucillia. 



> _sorry not sorry: ace!Palpatine. (in multiple senses I suppose, but one isn't all that relevant here)_
> 
> The relative ages of Dooku, Palpatine, and Qui-Gon Jinn are more similar here to those of their actors, rather than the canon nonsense about Qui-Gonn being older than Palpatine.

Palpatine was shaky from the aftermath of adrenaline and dusted with rock dust, much as the story had gone of Tenebrous's death. Only, through ears pounding with blood, he heard comments that made him think Darth Plagueis did not properly understand what had happened in the grottoes of Theed. (Destruction, vandalism they'd call it) Cosinga, alas, was not dead, for one thing... 

"...you are a beautiful young man," Damask said, voice flat and without guile, and yet another wave of something like fear hit the youth. Only now did it fully hit him, hard, that joining himself to Damask's cause meant...the same sort of thing, no better, that he had had from Cosinga for years. True, he didn't exactly know any different; it seemed to be the nature of men. But if the old Muun was contemplating pederasty as well... And he had no want of it, had no want even of his peers as ought to be expected.

"Have you heard of the Sith?" Plagueis asked, as if it would grab his attention. 

"The... Jedi sect?" Palpatine said absently, the words seeming to float together only with great difficulty, as if he were obliged to extend to his farthest reach to access each one in turn, all the while on the verge of collapsing.

Plagueis, at least, seemed to have some sense of his difficulty and proceeded to a monologue of an explanation that mostly drifted past the youth's ears without actually landing in his mind. But finally the tone of a question he posed at the close of his speech made him pay petrified attention, "Would you...join with the Sith, to be offered great power?"

"I--" but his mouth only gaped, no reply forthcoming, all words suddenly absent.

He said something further, about the Jedi having no use for a person like him.

 _The Jedi._ and it suddenly hit Palpatine, with dreadful fatalism, even though he himself had just mentioned them, before Damask had started going on and on. He was on a precipice--this the Muun had accurately appraised--, at the point of no return urged on by Cosinga's hate, and primed to succumb to any self-destructive plot that presented itself. Where his instinct for self-preservation had gone didn't bear asking. Did it count as Cosinga winning if he himself engineered the fall the man had been wishing for since the presentation of his heir? 

It was absolutely true: the Jedi would have no use for Palpatine, rejecter of his given name. They were probably, surely apt to punish him for daring to use...to use their power outside their jurisdiction, the power they so jealously guarded. And, well, there was no elegance in also condemning Damask, for Cosinga didn't like him. But now, well, he seemed damned, and if he could just have some say in how that transpired...

\---

Security tapes for a small spaceport of lax security showed a red-haired youth in shabby garments probably procured from a secondhand store bartering an aurodium trinket for a ride with a smuggler, to Coruscant, capital planet of the entire galaxy, home to the Jedi headquarters...

Yet no one watched them before the sectors were erased to make room for the next week's footage. It's a long way from Naboo to Coruscant.

And for once in these recent months, luck seemed to be with young Palpatine.

\---

"He claims he has information for us," Jedi Knight Auzell reported to the Jedi Council, before which she was standing.

"Find that unlikely, I do," Yoda said, twiddling his gimmer stick and all the while scrutinizing the Bith. Qui-Gon Jinn, the youngling Yoda was seemingly auditioning as another Padawan, dared to peer out at Auzell, but as the young man to whom the Knight was referring was not present, his curiosity was hardly sated. 

"About the Sith," Auzell pointed out. 

Master Darden sighed and despite Yoda's continued frown instructed, "Bring him in." 

Palpatine stood numbly before the Jedi council, a youth of seventeen with blood on his hands and not a true friend in the galaxy.

Qui-Gon Jinn carried on looking, studying the other human with curiosity. 

And now that he was here, words failed him yet again. Mistrust of him and even enmity seemed to slough off the council, still as they were, all the Jedi, as a fast speeder in flight sheds turbulence. 

"I know who your enemy is," he finally said, words catching in a hoarse throat and chapped lips. 

"Do you, now?" Master Yoda wondered aloud, almost callously, staring at him. 

"Why?" Master Darden asked, loud in the otherwise silent room. 

"He...wanted to recruit me," Palpatine admitted. This was every bit as bad as being called before Cosinga and worse: the Jedi had no preexisting loyalty, dictated by common blood, to persuade them to spare him.

"Ah. A callow, and rotten-hearted youngling you are," Yoda pronounced without a hint of mercy, without the suggestions of sympathy Damask had laced his words with. And it is a terrible thing, to learn that sometimes one is capable of picking up on others' mental images, when that image is of you as a maggot-ridden apple. Palpatine recoiled; he could hardly help it.

"But perhaps he does know," Darden put in, and Master Tyvokka said something in Shriiwook, which Yoda nodded at. 

"Tell us all you know--" instructed Darden, as if he were trying to play sympathetic.


End file.
